


caring is creepy

by hammerhorror



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Background Relationships, Getting Together, Holidays, Intimacy, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28023102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hammerhorror/pseuds/hammerhorror
Summary: Let the record show that Eddie’s divorce had little to nothing to do with Richie, because this isn’t a made-for-TV rom-com and that just isn’t how things work. But the cosmic symmetry of Derry’s influence on their lives appears to have been in full effect when Richie decided to fly out to New York City for the sole purpose of helping Eddie settle into his new apartment in Brooklyn.Because that forced Eddie to admit to himself that, yeah, he’d been a little bit in love with Richie when they were kids.Huh. That’s kind of weird, right?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 268





	caring is creepy

**Author's Note:**

> if you saw me writing this instead of my wips no you didn't
> 
> if there are any readers from tennessee out there: hi

Let the record show that Eddie’s divorce had little to nothing to do with Richie, because this isn’t a made-for-TV romcom and that just isn’t how things work. But the cosmic symmetry of Derry’s influence on their lives appears to have been in full effect when Richie decided to fly out to New York City for the sole purpose of helping Eddie settle into his new apartment in Brooklyn.

Because that forced Eddie to admit to himself that, yeah, he’d been a little bit in love with Richie when they were kids.

Huh. That’s kind of weird, right?

Eddie’s first recovered memory upon getting the call from Mike was the bone in his arm snapping in two. Mostly centered on the pain, not necessarily the context beyond a vague sense of dread. On the flight to Derry, he remembered a boy setting the break, but he didn’t yet remember the boy.

Then later that evening at the Jade, Eddie remembered the boy, but he did not remember why on earth the boy was compelled to snap his broken arm back into place.

Then in the sewers, Richie told Eddie, “You’re braver than you think,” and Eddie remembered why the boy was compelled to snap his broken arm back into place. Because that’s just the sort of heart Richie has. Emotionally angled towards Eddie for reasons he has never understood but cherishes too much to question.

A little over a week after they had all departed from Derry and attempted to put out the fires of their respective lives, Eddie woke up one morning to see a text from Beverly, which was nothing more than a link to an article with a headline that nearly made Eddie choke to death on his own tongue.

**RICHIE TOZIER COMES OUT AS GAY IN EMOTIONAL, TELL-ALL INTERVIEW (EXCLUSIVE)  
** _Comedian Richie Tozier is here to address the mystery surrounding his enigmatic pilgrimage to Maine, his history of offensive, low-brow humor, and its reconciliation with his identity as a gay man._

**Beverly** : did you know about this???????!!!!!!!!  
**Eddie** : No. Did you?  
**Beverly** : no. why wouldn’t he tell us?  
**Eddie** : Well probably because he hardly knows us  
**Beverly** : ??? we’re his best friends, eddie

And Eddie didn’t really know what to say to that. Maybe he was cynical, maybe he was compartmentalizing the dizzying closeness he had with Richie as a child safely and hermetically sealed off from the dizzying closeness he wanted with Richie as an adult. He texted Richie and said, _Congratulations. I’m happy for you. We’re all here for you_ , and Richie texted him back an infuriatingly ironic series of emojis. Eddie wanted to kiss him.

**To** : Edward Kaspbrak  
**Cc** : Stanley Blum-Uris  
**From** : Patricia Blum-Uris  
**Subject** : YOU’RE INVITED…

_… to the first annual non-denominational Losers holiday gathering to celebrate enduring friendship and emotional support for any and all recently divorced friends!_

_LOCATION: The Blum-Uris residence  
DATE: TBD  
WHAT TO BRING: Your lovely selves and all of your emotional trauma _

_Please confirm what days work best for you so Stanley can make an unnecessarily complicated Excel spreadsheet._

_Love,_

_Patricia & Stanley _

**To** : Patricia Blum-Uris  
**Cc** : Stanley Blum-Uris  
**From** : Edward Kaspbrak  
**Subject** : Re: YOU’RE INVITED…

_I have the last two weeks of December off of work. I’m concerned about the pollen count in this area of the country. What can you tell me about that? Please advise._

_Thank you,_

_Edward Kaspbrak_

**To** : Edward Kaspbrak  
**Cc** : Patricia Blum-Uris  
**From** : Stanley Blum-Uris **  
Subject** : Re: Re: YOU’RE INVITED…

_Pollen count is in the green, but bring antihistamine just in case. Love you, Eddie._

_Stanley_

**To** : Stanley Blum-Uris  
**Cc** : Patricia Blum-Uris  
**From** : Edward Kaspbrak  
**Subject** : Re: Re: Re: YOU’RE INVITED…

_Will do. Love you too._

_Thank you,_

_Edward Kaspbrak_

“I’m not saying it’s weird, I’m saying it’s disgusting,” Richie says, his voice tinny and much too far away and Eddie can hear the sound of some stupid, noisy video game in the background. 

Eddie has the call set to speakerphone, phone sitting on the kitchen counter while he eats an uncharacteristically late snack before bed. Richie has fallen into the habit of calling Eddie around this time several days a week, just to talk about whatever. It had started out as some kind of post-divorce emotional welfare check for Eddie to make sure he was staying sane living on his own for the first time in his entire life, essentially, but now it’s just a mundane and comforting habit.

“I feel like that’s the same thing,” Eddie says. He breaks a celery stick in half and dips a piece into a jar of peanut butter. “Weird and disgusting. They mean the same thing in this context.”

“Eddie, it’s celery—it’s just a bunch of water and strings.”

“Okay? And?”

“And it’s disgusting!”

“I’m using it as a vehicle for my peanut butter!”

“Then just eat the peanut butter, Eds! Skip the celery, grab a spoon, and eat the peanut butter.”

“Wh—no! No, that’s… depressing! That’s sad! Eating peanut butter with a spoon. You’re an animal.”

“You make no sense to me. You overcomplicate everything you do in your entire life,” Richie says, dismayed. “You have peanut butter which is good and celery which sucks, and you insist on eating the celery even though you don’t have to.”

“Because I’m not a child, Richie, sometimes I eat a vegetable,” Eddie says.

“You have the conviction of a Puritan patriarch,” Richie says.

“Yeah, well,” Eddie grumbles, “my therapist tells me I adhere too strictly to self-imposed rules and rituals in order to justify my existence, so maybe you’re onto something.” He crunches down on the celery. It is gross, and weird, and disgusting. Eddie hates celery. He’s going to eat the whole stick and then have another one tomorrow and then he’ll keep eating it until the whole stalk is gone, because that’s what adults do. 

“I literally knew that about you when we were ten. That’s all it takes to be a therapist?” Richie asks. “You should be paying _me_ the big bucks.”

“I’ll fax you my insurance information and a dossier on everything that’s ever been wrong with me since I was born,” Eddie says. “Hey, before I forget—when are you flying into Atlanta? I’m getting there on the 20th in the afternoon.”

Richie hums and taps around on his phone for a moment. “The day after you. You think you can handle _anothe_ r twenty-four hours away from me, Eds?” he asks. Eddie can practically hear his stupid grin over the phone.

“Fuck off. God forbid I care about you and want to know things about your life. All you do is give me grief.”

“Yeah, well,” Richie says. He pauses. “I just like it when you get all riled up.”

They say goodnight soon after and Eddie has that recurring desire to ask Richie to stay on the phone with him until he falls asleep. He knows that Richie would do it, but it’s an embarrassing thing for a forty-one-year-old man to feel like he needs.

Their emotional intimacy reached a point resembling clingy when Eddie was in the throes of his divorce, manically stressed and greedy with whatever Richie was willing to give, which was quite a bit. But things have calmed down and there’s no reason for Eddie to show himself as being so pathetically vulnerable anymore. At this point it just looks like a permanent character flaw and not the understandable result of miserable circumstances.

Eddie drags himself to his sparsely decorated bedroom and takes a good hard look out of the window at his view of the cityscape. Nothing remarkable. Brooklyn’s okay. He’s lonely. It’ll be nice to get away for a few days.

**Beverly** : eddie baby. you know i know tons of eligible singles in new york city, right?  
**Bill** : Jesus Christ Bev, give the ink time to dry  
**Beverly** : time is fleeting  
**Eddie** : Haha. I’m okay for now, Bev, but thank you.  
**Mike** : That’s good Eddie, it’s good to take time for yourself  
**Stan** : It’s fine to take your time. There’s absolutely no rush.  
**Richie** : we can’t all be like ben and beverly  
**Ben** : Yeah 😊 Do things at your own pace, Eddie.  
**Beverly** : yeah they’re right, i’m sorry eddie!!!  
**Beverly** : you’re a total catch though, you know that? right?  
**Eddie** : If you’ll recall, Myra emphatically disagrees.   
**Richie** : while simultaneously wanting you to live up her ass FOREVER  
**Ben** : 😢  
**Beverly** : fuck that bitch, she doesn’t know shit

Stan and Beverly pick him up from the airport. They completely envelope him in a smothering hug before taking his bags and packing them up in the car. Stan never used to be too touchy as a child, but the way he pulls Eddie close is warm and strangely familiar. The weather is a bit chilly, but milder than New York City. Beverly’s cheeks are rosy from the cold.

“So,” Beverly says, twisting around the passenger seat to look at Eddie. Stan scolds her and tells her it isn’t safe. “Just a fair warning—something obviously went down between Mike and Bill, because they’re kind of awkward with each other.”

Eddie must have a stupid look on his face, because Beverly starts laughing. “Wait—no, seriously! Have I been completely out of the loop on this?”

“Oh, no,” Beverly says, waving her hand dismissively, “not at all. This is recent development. We’re just playing the whole thing by ear. It isn’t bad, I promise. But we’re trying to avoid mentioning anything about Mike visiting Bill in California.”

Enough time has passed since leaving Derry that Eddie is feeling comfortable with assessing his friends, the people they had been as children and the people they have become as adults. He thinks that Bill and Mike are both sensitive and dangerously vulnerable and the sense of smug satisfaction he gets from this assessment tips him off to the fact that he’s actually projecting.

Bill calls him sometimes when he’s drunk and there’s usually a lot of crying involve. He says he feels like Eddie is the only person who never judges him, which is funny because Eddie actually judges Bill and all of his friends quite a bit, but it’s a sweet sentiment, nonetheless. But Mike…

“It worries me, for Mike,” Beverly says, probably reading Eddie’s thoughts, that’s definitely something she can probably do now. She just hasn’t told them because she’s nosy and likes knowing what everyone’s thinking. “I mean, yes, I worry about Bill in this situation. But Mikey.”

“Mikey,” Stan agrees.

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

“Spending all those years alone…” Beverly says quietly, seeming mostly like she’s talking to herself. She sighs and turns back towards the front. “Anyway. We just have to play it cool. I don’t _want_ everything to be _weird_.”

She always used to say that when they were kids. Whenever there would be a heavy disagreement between any of them. It was difficult to not want to do Beverly’s bidding. It’s still difficult, it seems, as Eddie feels the fear of God in him when she says this today.

“It won’t be _weird_ ,” Stan says, carrying the same inflection. He’s maintained his calm confidence throughout the years. It’s a comfort to know. He seems to believe in his friends enough to trust that they won’t make any type of scene at his house. That’s very generous of him. 

They’re in Alpharetta now, a few miles north of Atlanta. Stan says it’s just easier to tell people that they live in Atlanta, because no one knows where Alpharetta is. “It’s a part of the metropolitan Atlanta area. Patty and I lived in the city when we were younger, but it was a little too fast-paced for our taste. Look.” He points to a coffee shop off the side of the road, changing the subject. “That’s where Patty and I get our coffee. They make a homemade carrot cake that she really loves.”

Eddie never had things like that with Myra. Anything he enjoyed during their ten-year marriage was done so in secret. He imagines Stan coming home from work with a coffee and a piece of carrot cake for Patty. Being married to Stan is probably really nice. 

Being married to someone you love is probably really, really fucking nice.

Stan and Patty live in a cute raised ranch style house at the end of a cul-de-sac that is painted yellow and has stone siding decorating the exposed portions of the basement foundation. The front door is open to allow heat from the kitchen to escape the house, where Patty is teaching Ben how to make _challah_. Mike and Bill sit in the living room silently watching an old claymation Christmas movie on TV, sitting on opposite ends of a comfortably broken-in sectional couch. They both hop to their feet at the sight of Eddie and carefully take turns hugging him, not swarming him with a tangle of limbs like Stan and Beverly did.

And although Eddie has always hated being fussed over his entire life, Patty wants to fuss over him, so Eddie lets her. She shows him to the kitchen and insists on making him tea while Ben shows off his first attempt at Star of David shaped _challah_. It’s a little crooked, but he’s extremely proud of his handiwork. Beverly greets Ben with a kiss on the cheek, very chaste and pure.

“Beverly and Ben got here yesterday, so they got dibs on the guest room,” Stan says, sitting down at the kitchen table and graciously accepting a cup of tea from Patty. “We have a sofa with a pull-out bed in the study and the basement is furnished with enough room for everyone else, so.” He pauses, taking a sip of his tea. “Fight, I suppose.”

Eddie, Bill, and Mike play rock, paper, scissors. Bill wins the study. Eddie and Mike are relegated to the basement with the understanding that Richie will also be joining them there when he arrives the next morning.

“Patty has a big family,” Stan explains, lugging one of Eddie’s suitcases down the stairs. Eddie and Mike follow behind. “Lots of nieces and nephews. This has basically been our passion project for the last fifteen years… since we got the house.”

“Fifteen years, huh,” Mike says, sounding very impressed. Maybe thinking of everything he would have done in the last twenty-three years if he’d been given the chance. But he looks so happy, relishing in the accomplishments of his friends. He doesn’t really seem like a _house in the suburbs_ kind of guy anyway, at least not with the restlessness thrumming in his veins as he figures out what he wants to do in the more immediate future. “And you’ve been married for twenty?”

“Twenty-one as of November,” Stan says. “We were far too young, but I knew it would work.”

“That’s wonderful, Stanley,” Mike says warmly.

Stan gives him a glance over his shoulder and smiles, barely visible in the residual light from the kitchen as they venture further down into the basement. “We’ve had a good time together,” he says. “She wants to share our lives with you all as much as we can.” They reach the bottom of the stairs and he flips on a light switch.

Being relegated to the basement turns out to be perfectly fine, since by _furnished_ and _passion project_ Stan had meant that it’s essentially a second home underneath the main level. There’s a living area with a couch and a television, a full bathroom, and two small, comfortable sleeping areas separated from the living space with a half wall. The walls are covered in built-in bookcases with clean, neat white panels underneath.

“This was all Patty’s idea,” Stan continues. “Everyone visiting. She’s happy that things… make a little more sense than they did before.”

Myra never had any interest in meeting the others, after Eddie returned home from Derry. She met Beverly a few times towards the end, and not because she _wanted_ to—Eddie had tired of living out of a hotel room, finally swallowing his pride and asking Beverly if he could stay with her at her new place in Chelsea.

Beverly made a few trips to Eddie and Myra’s home to help him gather his things and Myra called her a homewrecking strumpet right to her face. Beverly was uncharacteristically sweet and well-behaved in Myra’s presence, though it took every last ounce of her willpower and she had a troubling twitch in her right eyelid until they were in the cab on the way back to Chelsea.

“Eddie is far too good for me,” she said, which infuriated Myra for some reason. And furthermore, it made no sense to Eddie, because he had historically low self-esteem and had always figured he was barely okay enough to be considered a decent husband, let alone a good one, let alone _too_ good for anyone. Ah, well. He’s no one’s husband now and that’s fine, he supposes.

“She’s wonderful, Stan,” Eddie says, meaning it from the bottom of his heart. “You two are great for each other.”

Richie arrives early the next morning and Eddie knows this because he can hear Richie and Beverly screaming like maniacs from the kitchen. He drags himself out of bed, still jetlagged, and notes that Mike has already woken up and joined the others upstairs. Miserably, he attempts and ultimately fails to make himself look presentable. Nothing can hide the exhaustion and the dark circles and the bone-aching existential misery Eddie is feeling. He climbs the stairs and joins the scene. Patty _and_ Stan (!) are shoving all varieties of tea and coffee and pastries off on Richie who looks very happy, and tall, and handsome as always.

“Morning, Eddie!” Beverly calls from over by the coffee maker, waving one arm over her head.

This pulls Richie’s attention to Eddie, but in a strange way, like Richie isn’t quite happy to see him. Then Richie does this thing where he starts to reach his arms out like he’s going for a hug and then pulls back very abruptly. “Hey, Eds,” he says, calmly. Eddie can’t be sure that anyone else has noticed the shift in tone as they are all preoccupied with their own conversations.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and he isn’t sure where to go from there. So he offers to show Richie down to the basement and wonders what would make a person act that way. But not just any person. Richie. 

The first thing Richie says to Eddie once it’s just the two of them is, “So what’s the deal with Mikey and Bill? They’re being totally weird with each other.”

“Oh, are they being weird? I didn’t notice,” Eddie says. Really, he wouldn’t have noticed if Beverly hadn’t brought it up. It isn’t his place to share, regardless of what Beverly and Stan told him. If Bill and Mike want to create a maelstrom of awkwardness between each other, then that’s fine. They aren’t making it anyone else’s problem.

“Mike’s hand accidentally touched Bill’s when he was reaching for the coffee creamer and Mike basically did a twenty-foot vertical leap,” Richie says. “Like, like… in the cartoons when someone sits on something hot and they fly through the air with their ass on fire.” He wheels his suitcase over to the couch, drops his carry-on bag onto the floor, and collapses, arms stretched over the back and legs hanging off a little too far, just to give his spine a bit of a stretch. “Jeeesus Christ. Too old to be flying places,” he groans.

“Flying places is a huge part of your job. You fly places and make an absurd amount of money doing nothing,” Eddie says. He sits down beside Richie. Richie looks at him. He looks back. They look at each other for a moment. “Did you see Mike and Bill at all when Mike was visiting California?” he asks.

“We had all had lunch together once. It was fine. Not weird,” Richie says, still looking at Eddie with this strange sense of curiosity that makes Eddie want to throttle him. You wouldn’t think Richie had spent the last six months of his life witnessing Eddie upend his life and offering him unwavering emotional support the entire way. 

Eddie wants to reach out and touch him. He wants to hold his hand. He wants to take Richie’s hand and pull it up to the scar on his face and ask him what he thinks about it, because he already knows what Richie thinks about the scar, and he wants to hear it again. He doesn’t do this. But he wants to.

“Something must have happened,” Eddie says vaguely.

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Something. I wonder what.” He closes his eyes.

“I’ve,” Eddie says slowly, testing the waters, “missed you, Rich.”

Richie opens his eyes and looks at him again with that same freakish intensity. It fades into a gentle smile. “I’ve missed you, too, Eddie,” he says. And then he closes his eyes again and dozes off.

It wasn’t the third, or the fourth, or probably even the tenth or twentieth formerly repressed memory Eddie reclaimed, but on the way home from Derry, he remembered something that somehow seemed more important than anything else that had ever happened in Eddie’s life.

It was a Saturday. They were fifteen. Mr. Tozier had barbecued that day. Everyone showed up at Richie’s house to have lunch and run around in the sprinklers in the backyard. Gradually, everyone left, but Eddie would have rather died than go home to his mother, so he stayed behind because he wanted to be with Richie a little while longer. 

Night fell and Mrs. Tozier brought a blanket outside for the two of them to lie down on, because the sky was clear enough to stargaze. Richie pointed out bullshit constellations and gave them vulgar, disgusting names, just to get on Eddie’s nerves. They fell silent. Richie rolled over on his side and flung his arm over Eddie’s stomach and pulled him in for a hug.

“What the fuck, Richie?” Eddie asked, with no bite, no resistance, no desire to pull away. Richie was gangly and scrawny and his limbs were way too long. Eddie turned into him just enough that he could pretend like he wasn’t doing it at all. Like he _didn’_ t want to grab Richie by the face and kiss him right there. At age fifteen, fully realized and utterly despaired for it, he wanted to kiss Richie so badly. He pretended that this was a one-sided hug and Eddie was doing Richie a favor by allowing him to do it at all. It made Eddie feel much less culpable that way.

“You just look like you need a hug,” Richie said. He nuzzled his face up against the crook of Eddie’s neck. “That’s how it seems to me.” And he pulled Eddie in closer and held him for as long as Eddie would allow, which was longer than Eddie was willing to admit.

By the time everyone has recovered from their jetlag and gotten their fill of catching up with one another, they reach something of an impasse. Sitting around the kitchen table with the seriousness of a NATO meeting, they are trying to diplomatically determine what their plans for tomorrow are.

“Mike’s really set his heart on g-g-going to Savannah,” Bill says. It is overwhelmingly sweet to Eddie that Bill is advocating for what Mike wants to do, despite everything.

“And I wanted to go up to Tennessee,” Beverly says. “I want to see the mountains!”

Stan and Patty look at each other, communicating in their own psychic language. “We’ll have to split up. Patty and I will be chaperoning our children, it seems.” Stan says, pretending to be annoyed. “Who wants to go where? It’s about three and a half hours either way.”

“I think I want to go to Savannah,” Ben says, which surprises everyone, since he isn’t abandoning all sense of autonomy to follow Beverly to the ends of the earth. He blushes at their response. “There’s a lot of history there! I’m my own person!” he says.

“We’re going to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home,” Mike says, and Ben’s eyes light up like a child on Christmas morning.

“I’m with Red,” Richie says, nodding towards Beverly. She reaches out towards him and wiggles her fingers.

“Savannah for m-me,” Bill confirms.

“I’ll go with the Savannah group,” Patty offers.

“Patty’s from Savannah,” Stan explains, because he likes telling them things about Patty.

And then they all turn to look at Eddie, which he hates, because he has no idea what anyone wants from him. He still isn’t good at making decisions for himself. He gets paralyzed and fatigued from indecision when he’s trying to choose ready-made meals at the grocery store, how is he supposed to decide which three-hour trip he wants to take with his friends? 

“Eddie, baby,” Beverly says, pouting dramatically. “I want you to come with me. I don’t trust anyone but me to make sure you actually enjoy yourself!”

Richie looks back and forth between the two of them. Eddie wants Richie to say something. Like, _yeah, Eddie, you should come with us_ or _I want you to come with us. I want to spend the day with you. I want to be around you. I’m not feeling weird around you. I’m not scared to touch you._

“I mean,” Eddie says, shrugging, and then it’s decided.

“We can make it there in three hours if traffic is good,” Stan says. He’s holding a travel bag packed to the brim with various emergency supplies, as if they are planning on undergoing a treacherous mountain hike rather than a simple drive and walk-around East Tennessee.

Beverly is leaning up against the side of Stan’s car, taking selfies and sending them to Ben. The Savannah group left about an hour before them to make up for their slightly longer travel time. Richie puts his hand over her face to mess up her next picture and she bites down his finger. “I don’t like that,” she says.

“You really are insane,” Richie says fondly.

“And don’t you ever forget it,” Beverly says.

Eddie opens his own travel bag and shows his supplies to Stan. Stan nods approvingly and the four of them pile into the car. Beverly calls shotgun and Richie argues that since his legs are longer, he needs it more than her. Beverly says that rules are rules and if he wanted shotgun so bad then he should have called it. Richie concedes, respecting the laws that have always been.

“We’re heading to Knoxville,” Stan explains once they’re on the freeway. “Right in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.”

“Like _Deliverance_ ,” Richie says.

“That’s a very offensive portrayal of rural southern life,” Stan says.

“Wait—we’re going to East Tennessee?” Richie asks, digging his phone out of his pocket and frantically Googling something. “That’s where they filmed the first _Evil Dead_!”

Beverly gasps, hands flying over her mouth. “Oh, Stan! We have to go!”

“Morristown,” Stan says. This must be somewhat common knowledge for people in the general area, because he says it like it’s the most obvious thing on earth. “That’s about an hour from where we’re going.”

“I don’t think there’s much left of the cabin,” Eddie says. Richie’s spontaneous trip to New York City to help Eddie ease into his new, lonelier life had included a low-budget horror movie marathon which lured Eddie into an internet rabbit hole. He learned that the cabin from _Evil Dead_ is hardly more than a fireplace and basement surrounded by barbed wire. He was rather disappointed when he found out.

“Aw, you’re right,” Richie says, poking around on his phone a bit more. “It looks like we could also reasonably die if we tried to trespass on the property.”

“Oh,” Beverly says, “exciting!”

“We did not survive a demon child-eating clown just to be taken out by the county sheriff in Morristown, Tennessee,” Stan says. “Raincheck on dying at the _Evil Dead_ cabin.”

Eddie manages to fall asleep uncomfortably, face pressed up against the window. When he wakes up, he feels a feathery touch over his fingers. It’s Richie’s hand, having met Eddie’s in the middle of the backseat, and it sends a high voltage electric shock straight to Eddie’s heart. Richie stirs from his sleep as well, notices where his hand is, and quickly pulls it away.

“Sorry,” Richie mumbles.

“It’s fine,” Eddie says.

Richie tugs at his jacket and pulls it tightly around himself. He turns as far away from Eddie as he can manage. He holds his arm close up against his torso and doesn’t have anything else to say.

When they cross over the Georgia-Tennessee state line, Beverly puts a Dolly Parton playlist on to celebrate. “It’s so beautiful here, Stan,” she marvels, forehead pressed up against the window. “It’s nothing but mountains. I love it. I want to live here. I want to live where no one will ever see me ever again.”

“I think you’re a city girl at heart, Bev,” Stan says affectionately, and Beverly makes a vague noise in agreement. “It is beautiful here. There’s a mountain you can visit to see seven state lines. I’ve been there with Patty. I thought I was going to have a heart attack on the way up. If you go further north, you’ll hit Kentucky. Coal country. There’s a stretch of mountains where Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia touch. In the summertime, it’s unreal. It’s the deepest green you’ll ever seen in your life.”

Beverly sighs. Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers are crooning together on the stereo. Stan lets them all know they’re just about halfway there.

It’s overcast in Knoxville, Tennessee, but the rolling, endless expanse of mountains in the distance is something to behold, as colorless as they are due to the season. It gives off the impression of a place where you walk in never to walk back out. They end up somewhere called Market Square, which is something akin to an outdoor mall, decorated with wreathes and holly and elaborate arrangements of Christmas lights. There are restaurants and bars and quaint, local shops to explore. But what really catches their attention is—

“Oh my God,” Beverly cries, overjoyed. “An ice-skating rink! There’s a motherfucking ice-skating rink in the middle of the square. We _have_ to.” She grabs Eddie’s hand and drags him along behind her to the admission booth. He looks back over his shoulder to make sure Richie and Stan aren’t leaving him alone to be the sacrificial lamb. They’re following closely behind. Beverly buys tickets for the four of them and they take their rented skates off to the side of the rink.

“This is terrible,” Eddie says. “Can you imagine how many people have had their disgusting feet in these skates?”

“Yeah, but you’re doing this because you love me,” Beverly says, lacing up her skates.

“I broke my wrist once ice-skating,” Stan says. “Remember, if you fall, don’t throw your hands out to catch yourself. You’ll sustain a worse injury if you fall on your hands with all of your body weight than if you just fall flat on the ground.”

Eddie groans.

“Okay! Smell ya later, assholes!” Beverly shoots up to her feet and maneuvers around in her skates with impressive grace, like it’s as natural as walking to her. She’s out on the ice without so much as a second glance back to the rest of them. Stan follows after her, catching up with her shortly.

Eddie finishes lacing up his skates and carefully rises to his feet, gripping tightly around the metal bar circling the perimeter of the rink. Richie patiently waits for him, looking at him like he’s a normal person for the first time since he got to Stan’s house. He isn’t looking at him like he’s some kind of freakish, alien abomination sent to Georgia for the sole purpose of disturbing Richie’s delicate sensitivities. 

And when Eddie attempts to move forward towards the rink and stumbles forward Richie reaches out and catches him, hands gripping tight around Eddie’s shoulders. They hold themselves perfectly still. Eddie feels sick for a moment when he remembers that they’re in Tennessee, not New York City or Los Angeles, and they’re both men, and someone might recognize Richie. There aren’t many people out considering it’s the middle of a workday, but the fear remains.

But Richie just holds him steady, and looks at him, and smiles. “Careful, Eds,” he says.

“Don’t patronize me,” Eddie says, wanting very much to be patronized in this particular way.

Richie carefully removes his hands from Eddie’s shoulder. He turns to face the rink and then he links their arms together. “Is that okay?” he asks. He sounds very pained about it. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He knows he’s blushing. Richie probably knows he’s blushing. Everyone in a hundred-mile radius is going to know he’s blushing. They slowly move towards the ice together. No one really seems to care. Everyone’s focused on themselves. Mothers skating with their children. An old couple taking their time carefully stepping onto the ice. In the distance, Beverly and Stan are setting up to race from one end of the rink to the other.

Eddie and Richie skate a slow lap around the rink. Beverly and Stan pass them up twice by the time they circle back around.

“It’s been years since I’ve done this,” Eddie says. “I took Myra to Bryant Park to ice skate, when we were dating. She hated it. You would think I took her to, like, one of those weird haunted torture houses where you have to sign a waiver to enter.”

“Eddie…” Richie says with a heavy sigh. Maybe Eddie’s imagining it, but he thinks Richie pulls him in a little closer. “I’m sorry. Really. I’m sorry that you had to deal with that.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Eddie says, and he relishes in knowing that Richie is touching him, holding onto him, keeping him steady, staying close even though Eddie could realistically skate without any assistance now that he’s on the ice and calibrated to the change in surface. 

“I guess, to me, it’s a big deal that you were trying your hardest for someone who was unhappy with everything you did,” Richie says in that tone of voice he gets whenever Myra comes up in conversation. Like he’s trying to hold back a deluge of pure bile.

“She would probably disagree that I was trying my hardest. But I understand what you’re saying. And thank you,” Eddie says.

“For, uh,” Richie says, “for what it’s worth, I think—oh _fuck_!” Their conversation is abruptly cut off by Beverly completely eating shit a few feet in front of them while Stan stumbles behind her. Richie lets go of Eddie, instinctively reaching down for Beverly, which sends Eddie careening face-down on the ice. “Eddie, holy shit, I’m so sorry! Fuck!”

“Oh, fuck,” Beverly groans, taking Richie’s hand and using him to pull herself up to her feet. She turns to Eddie, slips again, and is narrowly caught around the waist by Richie. “Eddie, are you okay?”

“Did you throw your hands out?” Stan asks, finding his balance as he holds onto Richie for support. “Richie, you’re really sturdy.”

“I’m shaped like a triangle or whatever the most structurally sound shape is,” Richie says, holding out both of his arms for Beverly and Stan to cling on as they need. “Eds? You alive down there?”

“I’m good. No, I didn’t throw my hands out, Stanley,” Eddie says into the ice. He sits up. People are looking at him. “I’m bleeding, aren’t I?”

Beverly nods sadly and reaches out to help him up.

When they’re all steady on their feet, Richie does not make any attempt to finish what he was saying before. They return their rental skates, get hot chocolate, and head back to the car where Stan nurses Eddie’s busted nose. Richie calls shotgun when it’s time to go and Eddie’s stomach lurches for no real reason.

At Beverly’s request, they have lunch in a local restaurant far off the beaten path in a tiny town a few miles south of Knoxville, a barbecue joint that she saw featured on Food Network once. It was heralded as one of the south’s best kept secrets. The exterior of the building has rustic, unfinished wood siding and sits only a few feet away from a small lake. The parking lot is nothing more than a gravel lot. Several families are tailgating with Styrofoam containers filled to the brim with food, despite the cold, looking happy and comfortable. 

The food is served cafeteria style. Eddie has always wished New York City would get hip to restaurants where he can see the food being prepared. Beverly fearlessly moves down the line asking for a little bit of everything. The cooks and servers can tell they’re not from the area because of their accents.

“We’re all from Maine,” Beverly explains. She’s loving the southern culture of casual, friendly conversation being so commonplace. Beverly as a New Yorker is just as surly and unapproachable as anyone else in the city, but Beverly in the south is chatty and cheerful. “Two of us transplanted to New York, one to LA, and one down to Atlanta. Can I get a serving of fried okra? I’ve never tried it before!”

One of the line cooks tells Richie that he looks a lot like that comedian guy, Ricky Tozier, and Richie says he gets that a lot. When Stan orders a brisket sandwich over their famous barbecue pork, the line cooks are amazed to discover they are serving their first ever Jewish customer—to the best of their knowledge.

It’s strange to feel like a novelty, because Eddie is very used to New York City anonymity, but the atmosphere is warm and inviting. No one makes a comment when he orders his sandwich without the bun. He just looks like a neurotic Yankee that way, he supposes.

Eddie has only ever had New York City’s shitty take on southern barbecue, and he wasn’t a fan because he could just taste the inauthenticity in it despite having no point of reference. It was in one of those trendy places with the ugly industrial-style interior and Myra had, predictably, hated it, but they had commiserated over their mutual dislike. They both agreed it would be nice to take a trip down south and try authentic barbecue. It isn’t a terrible memory to recall.

The four of them sit down at a tiny metal table and observe the selection of in-house sauces available. “Should I try the hottest one?” Beverly asks. “What if I die? I don’t want to shit my guts out for the rest of the trip.”

“Loving the imagery of you shitting your guts out while we’re having lunch,” Richie says, picking a piece of fried okra off of her plate and popping it into his mouth.

“Take me or leave me, babe,” Beverly says, and she douses her sandwich with the hottest sauce, her eyes widening in abject terror when she takes her first bite. Richie laughs raucously and she responds by putting the sauce on his sandwich when he isn’t looking, so they can both suffer. 

Stan deems the brisket acceptable. “I should grab something for Patty,” he muses quietly to himself. Always thinking of her. Myra was always too risky to try and surprise with anything, so Eddie never tried. After the first few years, he stopped wondering if he should stop and grab dinner for her on his way home from work. Her cagey resistance to literally everything facilitated the same attitude in Eddie. Positioned itself under a childhood fraught with emotional torment and propped up the permanent damage to his psyche. It wasn’t Myra’s job to fix him, but it certainly wasn’t her job to make him worse, which is what she ultimately ended up doing.

He picks at his food warily, to start out. It’s good, so he eats the rest enthusiastically. It tastes like home. Not any type of home Eddie has ever known. The type of home he thought only existed on TV before he reunited with the best and only friends he ever really had and remembered he was capable of loving people. He understands why the people tailgating outside look so happy. Because coming to a tiny barbecue joint on the lake with the people you love is something that will make any reasonable person happy.

They finish their food and decide to walk along the edge of the lake for a few minutes. Stan’s phone buzzes with a text message from Patty, a few minutes off from the time she sent it due to the shoddy service back in the woods. “Oh fuck,” he says quietly, typing a quick reply. “They’re calling for snow soon up here. We need to head home or we might get stuck in the mountains.”

“Awwww,” Beverly says, clearly disappointed. Richie puts his arm around her waist and squeezes her tight. She rests her head against his shoulder. “There’s still so much to do.” 

“I know. I’m sorry,” Stan says, as if this is somehow his fault. “We’ll make it an overnight trip next time.” There’s so much depth and security in the way he says _next time_.

Eddie helps Stan clear fallen leaves from the windshield of the car, and then he calls shotgun, listening to Richie and Beverly prattle on about nothing until he falls asleep. 

Mike is overflowing with incandescent joy as he shows Eddie, Richie, and Beverly the pictures of the day’s Savannah endeavors. He wanted to stay later and do a ghost walk around the city, but they weren’t able to fit it into the schedule. “It was amazing,” he gushes. “There’s just so much life there. So much history. So much to learn. I can’t wait to go back.”

“Did you meet the ghost of Flannery O’Connor?” Beverly asks, chin resting on Mike’s shoulder to better see the pictures from where she’s angled on the couch. Eddie is sitting beside her, leaning comfortably up against her side, while Richie sits on the other side of Mike. It’s a sectional, so there’s adequate room for everyone, but it appears they are all in agreement that it’s necessary to sit directly on top of each other.

“Wouldn’t that just be amazing? After everything we’ve been through, I have to believe in ghosts. I _have_ to, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Beverly says. “She’s probably a mean ol’ bitch. She’d have the clown shaking in his boots. What else did she write? All I remember is the story about the family that gets murdered.”

“That’s a great story,” Mike says. “ _A Good Man is Hard to Find_.”

“That novel about the preacher and the creepy girl,” Eddie says, because he had read it college and absolutely hated it and that burning hatred never left him.

“ _True Blood_ ,” Beverly says confidently.

“No. _Wise Blood_ ,” Eddie says.

“Fucking _True Blood_ ,” Richie says, laughing. “Come on, Bev.”

“What? Am I just supposed to know everything all the time? Grow up, Richie.”

Mike scrolls through more pictures. There are some selfies with the others, including Bill, and they look very happy. The atmosphere is markedly different now. Bill is in the kitchen with Stan, Patty, and Ben watching them make _kugel_ , but it doesn’t necessarily seem like he’s avoiding Mike.

“What did you guys end up doing?” Mike asks. “Did you like Tennessee? I’ve always wanted to visit. East, Middle, and West Tennessee seem to have a lot of differences despite being a part of the same state. There are major regional variations in their accents. I would love to spend time in all three.”

“You’d love it, Mikey,” Richie says. “It’s just a couple of hours away from where all the coal is, I know that’s gotta give you a major nerd boner.”

“Oh _absolutely_ ,” Mike says emphatically.

“The most important thing that happened is that Eddie ate complete and total shit when we were ice skating.”

“That was literally your fault,” Eddie says, and Richie shrugs nonchalantly. “You basically threw me on the ground to grab Beverly!”

“He busted his nose on the ice,” Beverly adds.

“Oh, Eddie!” Mike says sweetly. “You can hardly tell.”

Eddie lightly touches the tender, sore skin on and around his nose self-consciously.

“We also ate at this barbecue place on a lake,” Beverly says.

“The one from Food Network?” Mike asks.

“Yes! The one from Food Network! It was so good, I tried their hottest sauce and I still feel like I’m dying!” 

It’s late, the lot of them decided to pass on an actual dinner in favor of whatever was on Patty’s agenda for Ben’s daily cooking lesson—the _kugel_ that Ben is working so diligently on—and Eddie needs to be alone. He leaves Beverly, Mike, and Richie to continue their conversation and creeps through the kitchen without alerting anyone to his dour energy, descending the stairs to the basement.

Since Richie was the last to arrive, he was left with sleeping on the couch. His suitcase and carry-on bag are stacked neatly together, though the carry-on bag is unzipped, and Eddie can see that Richie packs with zero thought of structure and accessibility. He neurotically thinks he wants to sift through all of Richie’s things and just sit there absorbing his energy. He probably would if he isn’t suddenly deterred by the sound of someone else coming downstairs.

Eddie turns around, expecting it to be literally anyone but Richie, and yet.

“Hey…” Richie says cautiously, like Eddie’s a wild animal with a broken leg, liable to lash out with teeth and claws at any sudden movement. “I just wanted to. Make sure you’re okay. You sort of just left without… without saying anything.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine. But can I ask you something, Rich?”

Richie gives him a small, terrified nod. He would get like that, sometimes, when they were kids. Only with Eddie, anytime he accidentally crossed some arbitrary line that sent Eddie from mildly but blissfully annoyed to genuinely enraged. It always preceded a sincere apology, and then Eddie would apologize for getting mad, and everything would go back to normal. Things can’t be that simple anymore. They aren’t kids. Problems don’t just fade away at the end of the school day.

“Are you… upset with me?” Eddie asks. His voice threatens to get stuck in his throat. He would have to ask Myra this, pointblank, because she would huff around the house and slam cabinets and drawers closed rather than confront him on anything he did to mildly inconvenience her. He knows it isn’t the same, but the muscle memory remains. “Have I done something to bother you?”

Richie’s eyes soften instantly. He does that thing again, extending his arms and then pulling back. It makes Eddie want to scream like a maniac. It makes him want to grab Richie and squeeze him until his spine pops out of his body. Just hold him there and bask in everything stupid and complicated and unsaid between them. “God, no, Eddie. You haven’t done anything. I’m—” He stops himself, chewing on his bottom lip.

“Then,” Eddie says, “explain all this.” He gestures broadly and vaguely at Richie.

Richie seems very small in this moment. Like he’s trying to shrink in on himself. Eddie would like to believe that he has never done anything to encourage to Richie feel like he needs to do anything to make himself smaller, but he’s remembering that’s he operating off of what he knew of Richie as a child and not what he’s still learning about Richie as a grown man.

Their feelings for each other as kids had been an endless back and forth and Eddie was willing to do nearly anything to bolster Richie’s own desire to poke, and prod, and tease Eddie relentlessly—because Eddie loved it, desperately, more than anything. Having Richie’s undivided attention brought on these rabid feelings of the purest elation and Eddie only ever wanted Richie to be _more_ , never anything less.

“I don’t really think it’s something I can explain,” Richie says quietly. He won’t look Eddie in the eyes.

Eddie sighs. He may as well be pressed up against a sheet of glass begging for answers. He has a little more pride than that. “Okay,” he says. “But. I just want to let you know that this is… hurting me, Rich. It hurts.”

Richie nods. He’s just going to accept this for what it is and make no effort towards mending or repairing whatever it is that’s suddenly broken between them since the last time they spoke. “I’m sorry,” he says. It doesn’t sound empty, so he must really mean in it, but it isn’t enough.

Eddie wishes they were kids again, when the solution to most of their problems was Richie bugging Eddie until he was distracted from whatever was bothering him. But now what’s bothering him is Richie. And Richie is seemingly hellbent on keeping it that way.

“I’m going to bed now,” Eddie says.

“Okay,” Richie says. “Yeah, okay.” He obediently takes that as his cue to leave Eddie alone, heading back upstairs with the others. He looks back over his shoulder, but doesn’t say anything else.

Eddie sleeps until noon the next day, which is frighteningly uncharacteristic of him, so much so that everyone decided to have a conversation about it in the group chat earlier that morning. The overhead lights are off, but there’s some light coming in from the two above-grade basement windows and the television in the lounge area. Eddie scrolls through everyone’s messages, but doesn’t feel like responding.

 **Beverly** : died of a concussion and we’re all just making fun of him ☹️   
**Richie** : i’m down here watching tv and can hear him snoring lol  
**Beverly** : deviated his septum on the ice rink and now he snores ☹️ 

Oh God. What if he really did deviate his septum? He’s going to have to go to the doctor as soon as he’s back in New York. He’ll probably have to get a septoplasty and it will change the entire appearance of his face. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing? He’s also suspected he has sleep apnea for years now, so maybe this is a blessing in disguise. He’ll have to thank Beverly later.

Richie is still watching TV in the lounge area when Eddie finally gets out of bed and changes out of his pajamas. He briskly tells Eddie good morning and Eddie briskly asks him if he slept well.

“Yeah,” Richie says, less cagey. “It’s nice, being here. I don’t always sleep well at home.”

Eddie sits down next to him. He’s watching a musical adaptation of _A Christmas Carol_ , one that Eddie has seen a few times throughout the years when he’s been to visit Myra’s family over the holidays and the television was left on for background noise while everyone had coffee together. He always gets misty-eyed at the end.

“My new neighborhood is a lot noisier than the last one. I like how quiet it is here,” Eddie says. He’d been used to the standard, strangely comforting noises of the city for years now, but something changed when Mike called him that day. He could suddenly hear everything, too much. It all became so grating and painful. Like the city was trying to expel him from its insides.

“I didn’t think I would like it as much as I do,” Richie says. “I thought—uh, that I would wait down here for you to wake up. Because when we were kids, you’d always get annoyed if I let you oversleep when you’d stay over at my house. But you looked really peaceful, so I didn’t want to wake you up just yet.” 

“Oh,” Eddie says quietly. “Thank you.” He was always getting annoyed at stupid shit when he was a kid. Anything that went against his incomprehensible set of rules was enough to make him insane. He’d already talked to a therapist about this. His mother made him feel like he needed to keep his life strictly regimented even when she wasn’t around, or something like that. He’s trying not to be so fussy lately.

“Eddie, I have to tell you something and you have to promise me it won’t—like. You have to _promise_ me it won’t make anything weird. I would absolutely lose my shit if you decided you didn’t want me to be a part of your life anymore, Eddie. I would not be able to take that.” Richie’s looking at Eddie with that weird intensity from the other day and it kind of makes more sense now.

“Okay,” Eddie says.

“Okay,” Richie echoes. They’re both sitting cross-legged on the couch, facing each other like two little kids in kindergarten at circle time. “I need you to understand that for my entire life, for as long as I can remember I have loved you. So deeply it is quite literally painful. And I feel so insanely fucking weird, and guilty, and like a genuinely bad person for—no, don’t say anything. You have to let me talk.”

Eddie nods attentively. It’s a bad habit of his, cutting people off. It was usually the only way to get a word in edgewise when Myra was having one of her moments.

“I feel like a genuinely bad person because I was just sitting there hoping and praying that you would divorce your wife. I wanted it from, like, the bottom of my shitty heart,” Richie continues. He reaches out and he takes Eddie’s hands. Holds them tightly and makes Eddie feel like he’s being swallowed whole. His hands are so big, and they’re so warm, and they’re an all-encompassing source of comfort and despair all at once.

“It’s what needed to happen,” Eddie says, not really understanding what the issue is.

“Right. Of course. For you. Not for me. And when I realized—that one day you were going to be ready to start meeting new people, and dating new people, and maybe even get married again, I felt completely gutted. Like I was lost in this fucking reverie of feeling like I had you all to myself and then I remembered that you’re… you. You’re you and anyone would be lucky to have you and someone will, one day. I didn’t want to make it weird. Being your pathetic gay friend who’s, like… really miserably in love with you.”

“So, your solution to that was to be evasive with me and make it weird,” Eddie says. He can’t help but smile. Richie’s always had a talent for overthinking and overcomplicating in the dumbest manner imaginable.

Richie laughs at that, stuck somewhere between sardonic and amused. “I guess so. Eds. You’re so important to me. I just want to be a part of your life.”

“Richie,” Eddie says. He feels like he’s going to burst in flames. Everything he has ever felt in his entire life has reached critical mass at this moment and he’s going to literally explode out of his skin. There’s no way to approach this with anything resembling finesse or delicacy or know-how. All he has is his love for Richie, no longer a cadaver rotting in the back of his mind for decades, alive and allowed to reach fruition. So, he’s just going to say it.

“I love you. I loved you when we were kids. I love you today. And I’ll love you tomorrow.”

“Fuck,” Richie whispers. He bites down on his lip. Eddie can see that he’s starting to cry. “I can’t let myself believe you, Eddie. Like—what if you’re just confused because of weird clown trauma bonding or I’ve been taking advantage of your vulnerable emotional state these last few months? I would never be able to forgive myself. And I can’t just… let my defenses down like that, Eddie, it would kill me. It would absolutely destroy me.”

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to convince you that I mean what I say,” Eddie says gently. He reaches out and pushes Richie’s glasses up on his head so that he can wipe at the tears spilling over. Even in the most painful circumstances, it feels good to be close to him like this.

Richie remains unrelentingly doubtful. He looks at Eddie like something—something—Eddie can’t place it. The way people look at something precious. It makes Eddie feel confused and dizzy and warm and cherished and loved and scared. Richie reaches forward to hug Eddie and kisses him on the cheek. Then he stands up and walks quickly towards the basement stairs, leaving Eddie alone.

The next two days are awkward.

Bill graciously allows Eddie to take refuge in the study, moving his things down to the basement and pushing the twin beds together to share with Mike. Richie is happy and talkative with everyone else, performatively so, and Eddie watches Beverly watching Richie in that discerning way of hers, but she doesn’t say anything to either of them.

On Christmas morning, everyone’s in the kitchen making a chaotic smorgasbord of various family traditions to create a strange, joyful interfaith feast. All of Stan and Patty’s favorite Hanukkah staples make an appearance, including a few of Ben’s wonky _challah_ attempts.

Beverly insists on trying to make biscuits from scratch like her mother used to before she passed, and they turn out horribly. Ben spends the next hour on his phone trying to find a KFC that’s open so he can run out and get a big order of biscuits for her, but everyone still picks bites off of her bitter hockey puck biscuits anyway, especially after Patty brings out a jar of homemade apple butter to salvage the sorry state of them.

Eddie and his mother never really had any Christmas morning traditions. He sits at the kitchen table and eats whatever the others throw in front of him. Blackberry cobbler, green bean casserole, two glasses of champagne before noon even hits. Ben returns with a box of fluffy, buttery fast-food biscuits and Beverly nearly cries when he tells her he drove all the way into the heart of the city proper to get them because everything else was closed.

“You’re the best,” she says, throwing her arms around him and giving him a big, dramatic kiss on the mouth.

Richie spends most of breakfast sitting out on the front porch, smoking and scrolling mindlessly through his phone. Eddie pretends like he doesn’t care, but he watches as Beverly fills up a plate for him. He imagines an alternate universe where everything is exactly the same, even the clown shit, but Eddie is the one taking him a plate of food while he answers emails from his manager.

“Hey.” Bill pulls a chair out and sits down next to Eddie. “You’re looking p-particularly morose.”

“That’s just my face,” Eddie says. 

“Nah,” Bill says. He reaches out and messes up Eddie’s hair. “Your f-f-face is downright cherubic. You’re a ray of s-s-sunshine, Eddie.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie says, squirming to move his head away from Bill’s hand. Everyone is fully engrossed in their own conversations around them. Beverly is sitting on the porch with Richie. No one is listening. Eddie asks, “What happened with you and Mike?”

“Oh, well,” Bill sighs. He links his fingers together and holds his hands at the back of his head. “Well, when you r-rush into an emotionally charged tryst two w-w-weeks after your divorce is finalized, it might just blow up in your face.”

“Tryst,” Eddie says. “You’re so fucking dramatic.”

“Mike would agree, probably,” Bill says.

“It’s okay now?”

“It’s okay now. At least I think so. At the v-v-very least, we’re going to make it through the holidays. I’ll consider that a win.

“I’m happy for you,” Eddie says.

Everyone begins gravitating towards the living room where they’re going to start a movie marathon off with _Fiddler on the Roof_. Richie and Beverly come back in from the front porch. She has her hand on his arm and whispers something in his ear and then leaves him to drop their plates off in the kitchen sink. 

“Eddie baby,” she says, ghosting her fingers over Eddie’s arm as she walks by the table. “It’s going to be okay,” she tells him, and she doesn’t elaborate further.

“She’s right, you know,” Bill says, always confident and assured when it came to soothing someone else’s worries, but never his own.

The three of them join the others in the living room where the movie is ready to start. Beverly sits on the floor up against the edge of the couch, comfortably nestled in between Ben’s legs. Bill squeezes in between Mike and Stan, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them.

And Richie looks at Eddie for a minute. He scoots into the corner of the couch to make room for him. Eddie sits down. They’re worryingly close. Something so gentle, so vague, nothing more than the promise of a magnetic pull between them, tells Eddie to lean into him. Richie responds by sliding his arm over Eddie’s shoulders, like they’re kids at the movie theatre.

Their breathing synchronizes. The movie starts. Richie plays with the collar of Eddie’s shirt. And they stay like that for quite some time.

Beverly and Ben take a red-eye flight from Atlanta to New York later that night. Though they are _together_ , as Beverly ambiguously puts it, Beverly is still living in her Chelsea apartment while Ben is living in his secluded home upstate and they will be parting ways soon. Stan and Patty are appalled when they hear Ben ask if they should call a cab since it’s so late. 

“We’ll see each other when you get back to the city,” Beverly says, giving Eddie a kiss on each cheek. She presses her forehead against his. “Cheer up, buttercup. I said it’s going to be okay,” she promises.

Eddie’s spine is not enjoying the pull-out bed in the study compared to the twin mattress he was using down in the basement, but it’s worth it for the increased sense of privacy. He’s nearly asleep when he hears a light knocking on the door. It’s probably Stan and Patty wanting to say goodnight, so he shuffles out of bed and over to the door, opening it halfway.

He should have known.

“Uh, hey,” Richie says, looking strangely demure.

“Hey,” Eddie says.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Eddie sighs and opens the door the rest of the way, gesturing for Richie to come in. “Do you,” he says carefully, “want… to get in bed?”

Richie stares at him in disbelief. Like he’d actually been expecting Eddie to slam the door in his face and tell him to fuck off.

“I’m serious, Richie,” Eddie says. “Do you want to sleep in here with me?”

Richie nods so quickly it’s almost funny. He’s in one of his rare moments of speechlessness. It’s cute. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever had that effect on someone before. They get into bed, jostling the comforter and pillows around until they’re both comfortable, each lying on their side and facing the other.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Richie asks. It’s so shamelessly childish. Like he’s been reduced to some primordial version of himself that existed before he learned anything about emotional intelligence.

“I told you,” Eddie says. “I love you.”

“You don’t—”

“Don’t,” Eddie cuts him off, “tell me what I do and do not mean. Don’t.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, sounding desperate and choked up. “Eds, what if I fuck it up? I’ve never been able to do this right. Because it wasn’t you. What if I never learn how?”

“My track record isn’t great either,” Eddie says. He reaches out and cups Richie’s face in his hand. “I’ve gotta be real with you. If I had any doubt in my mind that you are able to properly care for me, I don’t think I could have asked you to sleep in bed with me. I need you to understand that. I spent half of my marriage with Myra sleeping in the guest room.”

Richie laughs, and it comes out more like an aggressive huff of air. He brings his hand up to hold over Eddie’s. “Jesus Christ, Eddie, I love you so much it makes me feel stupid. I always did. You made me feel crazy when we were kids.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Well. Same.”

“That makes no sense to me,” Richie says. “I was such a weird looking kid. Not to mention every other fucking thing that was wrong with me. All the emotional shit. Tons of baggage. My parents never understood me and I took it out on you guys.”

“Oh?” Eddie says. “And I was so normal? I was so well-adjusted? You flatter me, Rich.”

“You were perfect,” Richie says softly. He angles his head just slightly enough to kiss the palm of Eddie’s hand. “Really. There’s never been anyone better for me, Eddie. You’re perfect.”

Richie holds Eddie’s hand on the way to the airport. Stan acts like it’s gross, but then he tells them that he’s happy, and he wants them to be careful, and he’s there for them, and he thinks this is a really good thing. He’s crying a little when he hugs Eddie goodbye. Richie isn’t, much to Eddie’s surprise. He holds Eddie tight, and they sway back and forth for a moment, and then he kisses Eddie on the forehead. Then he says goodbye and kisses him again, on the lips. A quick, light kiss.

The flight’s okay. Eddie nurses a small plastic cup of orange juice to try and curb his nausea. The kid seated next to him asks him if he likes _Minecraft_ and he says yes, even though he doesn’t know what that is. Then the kid shows him a game on his iPad that consists of a bunch of different colored blocks and the little block-shaped cats he keeps as pets. When the flight ends, the kid says, “Thanks for talking to me, Mister!” and Eddie feels weirdly emotional.

It’s nice being back in New York City. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, or whatever. The freshly fallen snow is already starting to look dirty. He texts everyone and tells them that he got home safely. Beverly calls him the second his text goes through.

“How are you feeling, my love?” she asks.

“Sad. I miss everyone.”

“Yeah. Me, too. And Richie?”

“I think it’s going to be okay,” Eddie says.

“See!” Beverly says joyfully. She lets out a victorious cackle. “I told you. I _told_ you!”

Richie flies over for New Year’s which Eddie thinks is excessive, but Eddie’s opinion doesn’t really matter considering Richie doesn’t tell him he’s in town until he’s touched down at JFK. “I’m staying with Beverly, but I’m here to see you,” he says. Eddie can hardly hear him over the airport noises in the background. “I thought. You know. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

“It made sense in my head,” Richie says.

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie says.

“But. I mean,” Richie says.

“No, yeah,” Eddie says, and then they both start laughing since neither of them are really making any sense. “But, if you wanted to. You could stay with me. I would like you to.” He takes a deep breath. “I am inviting you to stay at my apartment.”

“Cool,” Richie says.

“ _Cool_?” Eddie repeats incredulously.

“Yeah. Cool. I’m catching a cab. Bye.”

“Okay. _Cool_. Bye.”

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

Richie laughs at that. “Not possible, Eds,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.” 

After Richie breaks the news to Beverly that he’s going to be staying with Eddie, they order takeout and eat dinner in the living room. They spend the next several hours watching _Will & Grace _so Richie can explain his theory that all great sitcoms end up overstaying their welcome and when that happens, the tone shifts from funny and relatable to surreal and strange.

“This show didn’t age well,” Eddie says. “It’s so negative towards lesbians… bisexuals… basically anyone that’s not a Will Truman type of gay man?”

They’re lying together on the couch and Richie has his arms wrapped around Eddie. His big, strong arms. Eddie thought he might literally pass out when it first happened. Richie doesn’t seem to notice the way Eddie gets over him. It makes him wonder what it is about him that Richie gets all silly over. Maybe he’ll ask him one day.

“You’re a Will Truman type of gay man,” Richie says, nuzzling his face in Eddie’s hair.

“That,” Eddie says. “I hate that. I hate that you just said that to me.”

“Sorry,” Richie says. “Notice that you aren’t arguing with me about it. That’s because you can’t.”

Eddie cranes his neck and twists his spine around to the most uncomfortable angle imaginable to steal a kiss. “Fuck off,” he says.

“Hmm, no, I don’t think I will,” Richie says. He shifts his arms around and grabs Eddie by the waist, effortlessly manhandling him until Eddie is straddling him, knees locked firmly around his torso.

“You’re strong,” Eddie says, braindead. His hands are pressed against Richie’s chest, holding himself up. He’s reaching a Zenlike state of calm because otherwise his brain would literally start leaking out of his ears.

“Yeah,” Richie says. He reaches up and touches Eddie’s face, running his finger over the scar on his cheek. “Or maybe it’s just that you barely weigh as much as a Beanie Baby.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, tweaking Richie’s nipples in the unsexiest way imaginable just to get back at him.

“Eds, holy shit!” Richie wails, one knee shooting up and slamming right into Eddie’s crotch, also in an extremely unsexy way, knocking the wind out of him. Richie is now laughing hysterically.

“You asshole,” Eddie tries to say, but it comes out more like _aaauuuughhhhh_ behind a pained burst of air. He can feel his arms giving out, so he lets them, and he lands perfectly against Richie’s chest. Elbows resting over his shoulders. Faces so close together he can feel his eyes starting to cross. “That really hurt, dipshit.”

“You just ripped my nipples off!”

“You compared me to a Beanie Baby!”

“The punishment did _not_ fit the crime,” Richie says. He places one hand on the back of Eddie’s head and pulls him forward, closing the gap in between them with a kiss. “I love you. You freaky little gremlin guy,” he says when he pulls away. 

“I love you, too,” Eddie says. He pauses and squints really hard and stares right into Richie’s eyes. Richie doesn’t question him, just lets him lie there and do whatever it is he’s trying to do. “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” he asks.

“What? Loving someone?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Loving someone.”

“Sure,” Richie says. “Yeah, it is weird. And messy and confusing. But it’s worth it. Don’t you think?”

Eddie lets the last of his weight fall down on Richie, resting his head in the crook of Richie’s neck and taking in everything he can. The feeling of his skin, and his scent, and his warmth, and each deep breath he takes. He loves him.

It’s weird. But it’s worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter!](https://twitter.com/hereditary_2018)


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